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A vast part of Youtube's audience are minors who don't have credit cards and couldn't pay for content. So they are shown ads.

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Youtube would not replace the ad model with a patron model, they would ADD the patron model. Patreon has shown there is clear demand for that feature.

One of the reasons Youtubers are moving to Patreon is a lack of trust in Google to provide a platform that generates a stable income, due to their demonetizing of accounts,arbitrary tweaks in the algorithm, refusal to defend Fair Use, etc.

If I were a big successful Youtuber, which I'm not and will never be, I wouldn't go near a patron service provided by the same company whose practices were driving me away from them to begin with.

Or just because ads is not viable before reaching 5M views a month. While convincing 1000 fans to give you 5$/month is easier. Patreon allow people with small community of dedicated fans to make a living while YT allows people that make crap watched by millions of people to make money. So they are complementary.

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